“Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised?”
Romans 4:9a

“My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
Luke 15:31-32

A few weeks ago during the WBC Sunday morning sermon, Jesus’ parable of The Prodigal Son was used as an interpretive frame for the book of Romans. This struck me. I can imagine Paul talking with the elder son as he angrily paced the sweltering upper rooms of the house, trying to avoid hearing the party outside. “Yes, it’s true the Father gave you his instructions” I imagine Paul saying “and you have been working hard for so long to honor them. But that’s not how you were included in the family! And you haven’t always been faithful to what he asked! If the Father invites your brother to rejoin the family, does that take anything away from you? There really isn’t that much difference between you: you both have sinned, both are in this family because of the Father’s patience and grace.”

Notably, Paul is not in the pigpen with the younger brother shouting: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God!” Paul isn’t dogging him on the road back home with the reminder that “There is no one who is righteous, no not one! There is no one who does good!”

And yet, that’s more or less what we do with these phrases. We use these words as evangelistic tools to (try and) convict unbelievers of their sins, to drive home the bad news that God views them as fallen short, all so that we can surprise them with the good news that comes next.

But Paul uses these phrases (and the chapters that go with them) not to indict or shame unbelieving individuals but to remind the community of Jewish believers that they have no authority to expel or even look down on the Gentile believers. This is a family conversation. These are calming, coaxing words: We’re all justified freely through God’s grace, by God’s initiation. It makes sense that the people who had viewed themselves alone as God’s chosen people for a thousand years would have trouble making the shift. Now, in Jesus, this covenant is open to all people from all nations. What is it going to take to convince the Jewish believers that they don’t hold higher ranking in this covenant, now?

Paul is reminding the “in group” that they have sinned too, even under the covenant, and need to learn to see Gentiles as equals under Jesus. Those who held a sense of superiority have no right to it: after all, we have all sinned. We’re all here by God’s invitation.

As we noted yesterday, probably few of us reading this are Jewish believers struggling to make sense of Israel’s salvation being extended to the Gentiles. But when we turn these verses on unbelievers, we’re missing the point. The point is that we established believers need to confront our self-righteousness, our tendency to believe that our group has an elite standing before God.

Paul is not primarily telling unbelievers that all have sinned, but believers; not to persuade them to surrender to Jesus but to remind them that pride and status rankings they love have no place in this covenant community.

Questions for reflection and discussion:

  • In what ways do you feel like the older brother in Jesus’ parable? In what ways do you feel like the younger brother?
  • What difference does it make to realize that Paul is speaking about Jews and Gentiles creating a community together under Jesus, in which those who previously viewed themselves as holding elite status no longer do?
  • What does it mean to be equal under Christ?
  • Are there people in the family of God you feel you have status over?

Church Reading Plan: Job 34; 2 Corinthians 4